Maine Eye Center history

“The Medical Society of Maine met at intervals and in 1834 published the first number of a journal.

At the second Annual Meeting in 1854, the Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association was adopted and it has remained the code to the present day, although it has been amended from time to time.

At the Annual Meeting on June 4, 1857, Doctor's Gilman Davies, Alonzo Garcelon, and J.C. Weston were appointed to a committee to procure a seal for the Association.

In February 1868, the State of Maine Passes “An Act to incorporate the Maine General Hospital.” Officers are elected, and the process of building a hospital on Bramhall’s Hill begins.

When the first patient is admitted on November 9, 1874, only the East pavilion and two outbuildings are complete.

Most of the nursing care is given by students of the Maine General Hospital Training School for Nurses, which graduates its first class in 1887.

After additional fundraising, the West pavilion and the Superintendent’s house are finished in 1892.

Maine Eye’s history began with a single ophthalmologist in 1907.

The Maine Medical Journal was established in 1910, with the first monthly journal being dated December 1910.

In 1938, the name of the publication was changed to The Journal of the Maine Medical Association.

In 1949, a sister organization, the Woman’s Auxiliary to MMA was established as a powerful ally.

In 1951, Maine General Hospital, the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Children’s Hospital merge to become Maine Medical Center.

In 1952, W. Mayo Payson, an attorney, was appointed as the first Executive Secretary.

He resigned in 1955 and in May of that year, Doctor Daniel Hanley was appointed to the position and the title changed to Executive Director.

Doctor Hanley ably served MMA for 24 years, retiring in 1979.

Completion of the L.L. Bean Building in 1985 provides expansion space for the Hatch Pavilion, a new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, operating suites, and specialty departments.

In 1991, the Maine Medical Center Research Institute is established to support the bench research that has been conducted at Maine Medical Center for decades.

In 1995, Doctor Hanley’s legacy was similarly honored with the naming of the second office building in Association Park as the Daniel Hanley Building.

The Gibson pavilion for cancer patients and the inpatient unit of The Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital are added to the Bean Building in 1998.

His legacy includes the Maine Health Information Center, the Maine Medical Assessment Foundation (ceased existence in 2002), Medical Mutual Insurance Company of Maine, the Maine Medical Education Foundation, and a host of other projects and interests too numerous to mention.

On April 28, 2003, a commemorative plaque was placed on the location of the former Tontine Hotel, recognizing the 27 physicians who had founded the Association exactly 150 years before.

Construction for the vertical expansion on top of the medical center’s lower Bean Building near the Emergency Department began in February 2014.

Surgery 2 is opened in 2015, which includes five new state-of-the-art operating rooms that were built to better meet the demand for routine and complex procedures performed today.